Fact: Many of us are actively fighting the City Center II proposal in part because it aims to bulldoze perfectly functional, medium-density, affordable, near-campus rental housing occupied by MSU students.

I’m one of those people. My family lives in the Oak Hill neighborhood, the one most affected by the City Center II plans. My husband and I have lived in this neighborhood by choice for 10 years raising our son here, in part because we value the homeowner-student mix of our neighborhood. Both of us are university educators, and frankly, we could afford to live in Okemos.

But it is important to us to live with students not only in our work lives, but also in our home lives. The students in our neighborhood are our babysitters, our lawn mowers and our friends. Our kids get to play Frisbee on the street with MSU student athletes, and we go watch the Homecoming parade with them. How cool is that?

We are not alone in our appreciation of our MSU student neighbors. Now, are my neighbors and I sometimes frustrated when a few rude students wake us up at 3 a.m.? Sure! But that doesn’t mean the city staff is representing us when they seek to displace our student neighbors more so they can add more “high-end” housing.

The truth is we find it just as annoying when some homeowner wakes us up at 8 a.m. with a leaf blower. Most of our neighbors — students and nonstudents — are good, courteous people who are susceptible to a neighborly discussion.

So why should students live near campus, and thus live among us homeowners?

1. MSU students deserve to have easy access to the university that keeps this city alive. (So why doesn’t the MSU administration defend that right?)

2. It is better for our environment that students not use gas-powered vehicles to drive back and forth from the ghettos — however ritzy and overpriced they may be — to which we try to confine them. (What about MSU’s vision for a more environmentally sustainable campus? City Center II looks at odds with that.)

3. It is safer for everyone if students who want to gather with friends at local bars can walk home.

4. When students live far from campus, they miss out on so many extracurricular activities that help them become more educated, creative, socially connected and involved citizens of the world. (Again, why doesn’t the MSU administration see that and value students’ residential proximity to the campus?)

5. When homeowners and city officials treat students as valued neighbors, they are more likely to respect and value us and our town. We have learned this especially through the Oakwood Social Capital Campaign, led by our awesome neighborhood president Ann Nichols. It is possible to have good community relations. But not if it appears we are maintaining those relations just long enough to quietly get rid of the rest of the student residents.

The homes that will be bulldozed on Evergreen Avenue to build a new parking garage under the current City Center II plan now house, in reasonable density, good neighbors who happen to be MSU students. I don’t want to lose those houses or their residents, and I don’t believe these student neighbors should be driven out in this bureaucratic, business-first approach that disrespects our neighborhood by disrespecting one of the most fundamental aspects of it.

It is time for this city to stop treating MSU students like mere sources of revenue, and start treating them as meaningful members of our college town. Treat them with respect and ask them to live up to our expectations. The current plan for City Center II does not do that, and so I call upon MSU students and central administration, in particular, to insist that City Center II plans be revised to support the sustainability of the reasonable-density, mixed housing of Oak Hill. Our neighborhood should be serving as a model of success, not as a problem to be “fixed” by dropping what looks like a chunk of Manhattan down in Valley Court Park.

Alice Dreger is an East Lansing resident.